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By Jaegun Lee - Watertown Daily Times

More than three dozen wrecked pleasure boats and warships from centuries past lie below the surface of the St. Lawrence River waiting for their stories to be told.

"There are fascinating artifacts on the bottom of the river and we have tons of underwater photos and archaeological photos of these boats," said Raymond I. "Skip" Couch, a veteran diver and founding member of the Clayton Diving Club.

Mr. Couch will present the findings of area divers, who have been searching the depths of the river to discover these sunken boats, from 9 a.m. to noon June 5 at the Antique Boat Museum, 750 Mary St.

Cost to attend the "Thousand Islands Lost Fleet" is $15 and includes coffee, dough nuts and admission to the boat museum. The event is sponsored by the Thousand Islands Museum.

"Around 30 boats have been found between the Rock Island Lighthouse and Deer Island — that's basically the most dangerous area in the Thousand Islands — and we believe that 50 more were wrecked and salvaged in the past," Mr. Couch said.

By  Rossella Lorenzi - Discovery News

Although the 2,000-year-old shipwreck under the Gran Sasso mountain in central Italy may be a godsend for nuclear physicists, the “Ship of the Thousand Ingots” has been one big mystery for archaeologists.

Was the ship, which carried the largest lead shipment ever found, deliberately sunk on the orders of the captain ?

Was the vessel knocked over by a wave ?

In this audio slide show, Donatella Salvi, director of the National Archaeological Museum in Cagliari, tells Discovery News what her team found when they recovered the ship's cargo.

By Joe Crankshaw - TCPalm

A larger than life-size, bronze statue depicting a fully equipped Navy SEAL, will become the center of a memorial to fallen Underwater Demolition Team men and Navy SEALs on May 28 at the National UDT-SEAL Museum on North Hutchinson Island.

“It will memorialize all who have given their lives in all wars,” said retired Navy Capt. Michael R, Howard, director of the museum. Howard is a retired SEAL. The acronym stands for Sea, Air and Land, where the highly trained special warriors fight.

The statue is by internationally known sculptor Roy Shifrin, whose works are displayed in Europe and the United States. It is the second bronze statue at the nationally recognized museum. The first, entitled “The Naked Warrior,” depicts a World War II UDT member who trained at the Naval Amphibious Training Station in Fort Pierce.

The contrast between the two statues illustrates how the specialized force has evolved. The World War II figure carries a sheaf knife, is clad in swimming trunks and flippers and carries a face mask. The statue of the modern SEAL has a breathing device, helmet, wet suit, flippers, communications gear and a firearm.

The new statue will be enclosed by a series of curved panels on which the names of all UDT and SEALs, who have died in service, will be engraved.

A brief ceremony will be conducted when the statue is installed, with a more formal activity planned for Memorial Day on May 31, said Howard.

The Hutchinson Island facility began as a museum to display treasure from the Spanish Plate Fleet of 1715, which sank during a hurricane off the Treasure Coast. It was one of two such museums, the second was the McClarty Museum in Sebastian.

After thieves stole treasure exhibits from the Sebastian Museum, the State Department of Natural Resources, which operated the two sites, shut down both of them in 1983.

From The Cape Gazette

The Roosevelt Inlet Shipwreck and DeBraak, two of the more than 200 shipwrecks that have littered the floors of the Atlantic Ocean and Delaware Bay off Lewes, will be explored in the program Zwaanendael Shipwreck Archaeology which will take place from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Saturday, May 29, at the Zwaanendael Museum, 102 Kings Highway, Lewes.

In addition to historical information and a display of artifacts recovered from the two shipwrecks, Zwaanendael Shipwreck Archaeology will include a hands-on activity which will help children better understand the science of archaeology by finding, analyzing and researching, or drawing artifacts.

The program will also feature a demonstration of stipple drawing by Sharyn Murray, a Millsboro, Delaware artist and Zwaanendael Museum historical interpreter.

Stippling creates an image through the use of small dots of a single color of pigment, applied with a pen or brush. HMB DeBraak was a British naval vessel that sank in the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Henlopen in 1798.

The ship was raised, and badly damaged, during a commercial salvage operation in 1986.

The Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs (HCA) has curated the remains of the ship’s hull and its contents since they were acquired by the state of Delaware in 1992.


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From People's Daily Online

A new batch of cultural relics from the ancient ship of Nan'ao No.1 were salvaged and exhibited on May 18, including 2 tin pots, walnuts and other porcelains carrying cultural elements of Han and Buddhism.

Therefore, experts concluded that Nan'ao No.1's destination might have been Southeast Asia.

Sun Jian, the leader of the archaeology team for Nan'ao No.1, said those color glaze porcelains salvaged yesterday are more delicate than relics from the ancient ship before, and similar porcelains were found during the excavation of another ancient ship called "Wanjiao No.1" in the sea area of Fujian province.

Such porcelains, according to him, were popular in the European market as well as Japanese market, and most of them came from Pinghe oven in Fujian.

Among the cultural relics salvaged yesterday, there are two tin pots with typical Ming characteristics. Sun said the two tin pots were close to each other, and that might indicate these two things were not the personal possessions of sailors but rather goods packaged for export.

Full story...

 
Credit: Underwater Heritage Program Directorate/Adhi Perwira

By Andrea Booth - The Jakarta Post

Lack of finance, technology and trained divers, the attempt to sell sunken artifacts — not to mention looters — appear to be hindering the potential to conserve Indonesia’s abundant underwater heritage, a topic under hot discussion of late.

The Underwater Heritage Program Directorate (PBA) under the Culture and Tourism Ministry’s Directorate General of History and Archaeology is keen to set up a system to overcome these challenges.

“Our objective is to preserve these culturally valuable remnants of our past,” Gunawan, chief director of the PBA said.

The directorate recently conducted five dives over 10 days to recover artifacts in the Karimunjawa region, Jepara, Central Java.

“We want the artifacts we have uncovered to stay and be looked after in Indonesia so that citizens and generations to come can learn more about the role Indonesia has played in the maritime industry from the 9th to the 19th centuries.” The PBA said in a press statement it would also help boost the tourism industry.

This initiative is not without challenges, however. Gunawan says the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry Pannas BMKT’s (the national committee of excavation and utilization of precious artifacts from sunken ships) commercializing of artifacts, including the unsuccessful auction early May of treasure reportedly worth US$80 billion, is devaluing Indonesia’s history.

Pannas BMKT’s secretary general Sudirman Saad recently told The Jakarta Post that artifacts the state wanted to preserve were held in a government warehouse in Cileungsi, West Java, with the remainder stocked in a privately owned warehouse in Pamulang, South Jakarta.

Gunawan said he was concerned that precious artifacts would not be preserved and wanted to encourage people to value them — as well as shipwrecks — more so they could learn more about their past and enhance national pride.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) agreed that selling the underwater artifacts meant Indonesia would lose its valuable heritage. “Exploiting an archaeological site and dispersing its artifacts is an irreversible process. Yet the contents of the shipwreck found off the coast of the city of Cirebon have much to tell us about cultural and commercial exchanges in the region at that time,” UNESCO director general Irina Bokova said in a press statement.

While Gunawan said it would take time to build a solid system to extract and preserve the artifacts, and gain people’s interest, he believed this goal could still be reached.

“People may be worried that [we may not have the technology], especially in Indonesia, and this may be because there has never been a preservation process undertaken before,” Gunawan said. “But we have to start at some point and I’m sure we are capable.”

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From BBC News

Unlicensed salvagers have been identified as the biggest threat to the shipwreck of HMS Victory in a report. More than 1,000 sailors drowned when the British warship, the predecessor to Lord Nelson's Victory, sank in a storm. 

The report is part of the public consultation into the future management of the 1744 shipwreck in the English Channel. Consultation ends on 30 June. The authors of the report said unauthorised salvage could result in "irreparable damage" to the wreck site. 

Wessex Archaeology, a registered charity with educational aims, produced the report for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and the Ministry of Defence which are carrying out the consultation.

It said the site had not been significantly affected by natural processes, but suffered "some level of past physical damage" from trawling or other fishing activity.

It also said the "greatest threat to the site", which lies within the range of some divers, was likely to come from "unauthorised attempts to recover items such as the bronze cannon or to search destructively for bullion and other valuables".

Wessex Archaeology added there was "little evidence" that more than $1bn of gold bullion reportedly aboard the ship actually existed.

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By Shawn McGrath - HP

Was it violent weather ? Mechanical failure ? Or pilot error ?

Nearly 60 years after the crash of Northwest Airlines Flight 2501 about 20 miles off South Haven in Lake Michigan, the cause of the then-worst air disaster in U.S. history is still unknown, and the location of the plane's watery grave remains a mystery despite yearly searches for the wreckage.

William Kaufmann was 6 years old and living in Seattle when his mother, 43-year-old Dorothy Jean Kaufmann, died in the crash.

"It was especially tragic because she missed her plane and took the next one, and that's the one that went down," Kaufmann, now 66 and a lawyer living in Oakland, Calif., said recently.

"I remember talking to her on the phone - the last time I talked to her - and she called to say she was going to be a day late. So, of course, I got up in the morning and asked my father if she was home, and you never saw such a look on a man's face."

According to the Civil Aeronautics Board's report of the crash, this is how the flight proceeded.

Piloted by 35-year-old Robert Lind, the four-engine DC-4 departed New York City's LaGuardia Airport bound for Seattle via Minneapolis and Spokane at 8:31 p.m. (EST) Friday, June 23, 1950. There were 55 passengers - including six children - and three crew members on board.

About 11:50 p.m., the crew reported to Air Route Traffic Control that the flight was over Battle Creek and due over Milwaukee at 12:30 a.m. About 12:15 a.m., near Benton Harbor, the plane was at 3,500 feet and the crew asked to drop to 2,500 for an unspecified reason.

Air traffic controllers denied the request because of other air traffic, and the crew's acknowledgment a few minutes later was the last communication sent from the plane.